Hail was bouncing off the metal roof creating a horrid cacophony just after four. This was followed by buckets of heavy rain and a little thunder. I was expecting it to remain wet for a long time so didn’t hurry from my pit. Closer examination of the weather forecast indicated that now might be a good time to go out and walk so we did.
I had my eye on the sky as far as I could given the darkness and general cloudiness. I did spot at least one star. The sea was very angry and breaking over the rocks at the end of the Promontory so crossing that was was not a cunning plan. We marched back to Alonáki Beach and along as far as we could before being turned back by the sea crossing the beach to fill up the already full river. Some of the dogs might have been up for continuing however I felt it would all end badly so turned them around. Good that we did as we would have been more caught out in the rain than we were.
We made it to the Big Beach for the second Promontory circuit when it began to rain lightly. I didn’t need telling twice so we turned around and hastened back to the camping. The rain was already more intense however we were not too wet. I dried the dogs, put them inside and made tea as it was still early. The cats were telling me I should be feeding them but I didn’t care and got on with my stuff. Eventually, I fed them then soon after adjourned to the loo. Whilst sitting looking at the forecast, there was a tremendous thunderclap and the little WiFi symbol disappeared from my phone screen. Then there was hail followed by heavy rain. The loo roof leaks a little so drops of water fell upon my person. Such joy!
The loud bang had put the cats off their breakfast and the dogs were scattier than normal. A quick inspection revealed the network switch in my comms cupboard had been fried by the storm taking out the one in the kitchen at the same time. I replaced the small kitchen switch so at least there was some WiFi working. The switch in my Comms Box connects all the devices as well as supply power to the APs and cameras and I don’t have a spare. I wandered the camping checking the other equipment and found that things weren’t as bad as I’d feared. In short, using older kit, I was able to cobble together the wireless but the cameras will not work until another switch arrives from China.
In the meantime, the new arrivals who came yesterday evening arrived in their huge truck requiring the removal of a branch or two. Wolfgang and his missus were leaving so I needed to take his money too. And the dogs had not been fed as yet.
The day trundled by with a mixture of heavy showers and even some sunnny intervals. I researched replacement switches then remembered the pig’s trotters given me by the nice couple who recently arrived. I put their pan in the main fridge last night and needed to give it back. I decanted the food and washed up the pan. As I was drying it, a handle fell off which was a pain. I could see it was not a high quality product as the handles had been spot welded. I don’t have the ability to weld so chose pop rivets however one broke off long so required removing and replacing. A simple task like cleaning a pan had morphed into a major event. I returned it and the nice lady came up to look at the dogs.
I eventually took Isabella onto the beach just as the sun broke through the unremitting succession of dark clouds. We played on the beach then went to the end of the Promontory and back. I forget how many times I threw the ball but Isabella took it for a swim in the lagoon and managed to bring it back! We returned to the camping as the sky turned dark yet again, I put on the doggy rice then fed the cats.
It’s been cold much of the day with little sunshine which yielded a miserable 2.24kWh of electricity. At least it was more than we used during the day but a long, sunny day is needed to bring the battery back up.
Jochem tells me he’s going to leave as he has problems with his electrical system so needs to take his van back to Germany to the supplier to get it fixed. It’s a valuable piece of hi-tech equipment so he’s keen to get it repaired as a replacement is around €3,000!
Leave a Reply